


Rings

by cuddlebucket



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:08:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlebucket/pseuds/cuddlebucket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People would always ask Eridan why he wore so many rings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rings

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little thing that came to mind while I was bored. A humanstuck headcanon or something. I dunno.

People would always ask Eridan why he wore so many rings. They called it trashy-looking. Ostentatious. Garish. They called him lots of other worse names too, and would laugh at him. It was a petty thing to be made fun of for, and it was a petty thing to care about, but he never let their ridicule stop him from wearing them. 

They were old rings, and they'd lost their luster, and on one of them, the big purple sone set in it had cracked in an odd zigzag pattern that Eridan found strangely endearing. Even though he was usually so persistent on all of his clothing and accessories being pristine, new, and expensive, he always wore these rings, and no others. 

Looking at the time-burnished, metal, he could still remember, though through the haze that childhood memories usually come, the night he'd gotten them. 

His parents fighting was not a new thing to him. He was seven years old and the thick rims of his glasses hid the bruise-like bags beneath his eyes born of long nights kept up by the sound of his father and mother arguing. Sometimes the fight would escalate until they were both screaming at each other, and Eridan would curl up, pressing his pillow hard over his ears, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to pretend he was somewhere else. Sometimes he tried to imagine a big, hairy, giant of a man bursting though his front door, cake in one hand and letter in the other, ready to sweep him out of that place and to somewhere where parents didn't fight. 

That night his parents didn't even bother waiting until he'd been put to bed to start fighting. Eridan shrunk back from the doorframe, peering nervously into the kitchen where his parents, both tall with intimidating, sharp-cut features, stood gesticulating wildly and shouting at each other about things he didn't understand. Before long, he slunk away, pulling a big, thick book titled 'European Military History' off from the shelf and slouching up to bed on his own accord. 

The next day, when he got back from school, his mother was home, which was unusual. She usually didn't return from work until late. Eridan's babysitter would watch him until she did, because his dad wouldn't usually return until after Eridan had gone to bed. Today, though, his mother was home early, and he was elated at the chance to spend more time with her. However, that didn't last long. He could see the black streaks of makeup down her cheeks, and the way her eyes were red from the crying. And her room was filled with cardboard boxes that were filled with things. 

They were getting something called a 'divorce', mother explained. When Eridan gave her a confused look, she explained that it meant mother would be leaving, and she wouldn't come back for a long time. 

That was when Eridan began to cry too, and he hugged his mother and they cried together for a while. Then his mother let him go and said she needed to pack, explained that she had to leave very soon of dad would get angry, so he said he would help her, and she thanked him but said he didn't need to do that, but he wanted to do it anyway. 

So they sat together and packed her things, Eridan hobbling around underneath things that were just a little too heavy for him. He wanted to prove to mother that he was strong and he could help her, if only she would just have the courage to ask, but she didn't. 

Then mother sent him up to her room to get her jewelry box, which dad had said she could keep, and he nodded and went up the tall staircase to his mother's room, the one with the deep red carpeting and the bed that seemed too huge to be real. He reached up onto the dark dresser and pulled the jewelry box down. An urge struck him, and he sat down with it in his lap and opened it up, staring transfixed at all the different colors and textures and all of the shining gold and silver. 

He put his hand into the box. He remembered his mother wearing these, at different times. The pink earring that she wore with that pretty dress of hers, the coral necklace, the diamond bracelet... and lots of rings. His mother loved rings. She had enough so that, if she were to wear a different one a day, she would have enough for two whole weeks before starting the cycle over again. The rings reminded him of her. They'd always looked so pretty on her long, delicate fingers. 

Eridan picked up the rings, twirling them in his fingers, slipping one onto each, frowning when they were too big for him. 

His mother called to him from downstairs, and he started. Slamming the jewelry box shut, he looked down at his beringed fingers and, hardly thinking, slipped the rings into his pockets and brought the jewelry box down to his mother. She packed the box away. 

Mother left that weekend, and Eridan and dad drove her to the airport and waited for her plane with her. Eridan wished someone else had driven them. The air between his parents was tense and cold, and he sat between them, shifting nervously and looking from one to the other, half worrying they would begin fighting again. 

But they didn't, and eventually mother's plane came, and Eridan really didn't want her to leave, but as much as he clung to her and cried and begged her not to go, dad eventually pried him off of her and he had to watch her leave, her face crumpled up and red from crying too. 

Eridan still had her rings though. For a while, they were his big secret, his security blanket. He kept them tucked away in the bottom of his sock drawer, and whenever he felt sad or lonely, or when he missed his mother, he'd take the rings out and put them on his fingers and try to remember how they looked on her, and that made him feel better. 

But one day dad found them, and he got mad. Eridan still shudders to remember how red his dad's face was, how loud he yelled. He even hit Eridan, pulling the young boy over his lap to spank him until he could hardly breathe for his crying. He confiscated the rings and left Eridan alone in his room, grounding him there. 

A few hours later, the tall man entered his room again, and Eridan shrank back into his bed, half hiding under the covers and pillows. Dad looked apologetic, though, and when he approached and reached his hand out, it wasn't to hit Eridan but to drop those rings onto the blanket in front of him, muttering an apology and that he would allow Eridan to keep them. 

And Eridan did keep them. He would still take them out when he was feeling sad, though as time went by, he didn't cry as much, and as months passed and his mother never showed up to visit or even wrote, he stopped taking them out altogether. 

When he was eleven, dad remarried, and the night it was announced, Eridan did take the rings out, and he cried. 

When he was thirteen, he got the news that his mother had died. Cancer, they said. There was nothing they could have done, they said. Eridan put the rings on that night and fell asleep crying, fell asleep with them on. When he woke up with the jewelry still on his fingers, he decided not to take them off. Looking at them comforted him, even if the memories they brought on hurt sometimes. 

The kids at school questioned him about the excess of rings, and they made fun of him. They jeered at him until he almost cried, but crying would be pathetic, so he just punched a kid in the face and ended up with detention. He almost took the rings off too, but by then he was just as stubborn as his father, and he wouldn't cow under their pressure.

He only takes the rings off when he bathes now. He's had to get them adjusted a few times to make sure they still fit, but he always wears them. He always has them with him. And he'll wear them even in funeral dressings.


End file.
